Luke Fickell reflects on how he has been impacted by his biggest coaching mentors

No coach gets to where they are alone and along the way, they’re impacted and changed by those who they work with and for in the coaching industry. That’s true for all coaches, including Wisconsin Badgers head coach Luke Fickell.

While making a recent appearance on BASCHAMANIA, Fickell opened up about his biggest coaching mentors in both football and wrestling and he reflected on how those mentors helped get him to where he is now.

“I’ve been fortunate,” Luke Fickell said. “I never wanted to be in coaching, to be honest with you. A lot of times, we have these different ideas and paths. Hey, we’re gonna play forever. We’re gonna do this. So, coaching wasn’t like, ‘Hey, this is what I’m gonna do when I’m done.’ So, as I went through it, and as I got into coaching I started to recognize the people that had the greatest impact. The reason, when that decision was made to go coach, it went all the way back from the time I was a little kid wrestling from my uncle being my wrestling coach. To be honest with you, my high school coach in both wrestling and football.”

Luke Fickell became an Ohio State player out of high school. During that time, he began to receive mentorship on college coaching, even if he didn’t know he’d be a coach at the time. Later, he’d become an Ohio State assistant coach. Again, the Buckeyes coaches became key mentors to him.

“Then, as I got further along, my mentors would really be, I played for John Cooper, I coached for Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer. So, in all of that, you are a product of your environment and being fortunate enough to be around these guys that are the highest of high ends at what it is that they do.”

In 2011, Luke Fickell became the interim head coach at Ohio State amid the end of the Jim Tressel era. At that time, he struggled but it also helped to shape him today.

“Being thrown in the mix to actually have to do it sooner than maybe you were ready for in my case. I had some trial and error and as I stepped back I recognized the great things I learned from all those guys and I kind of took a part of all that to be me, but those mentors as you go through have an incredible impact on what it is that I do today.”

Today, Luke Fickell is one of the best-respected coaches in all of college football, having led Cincinnati to the College Football Playoff before moving to his current role at Wisconsin.